What changes have you made when adapting the book into a movie?
The original story in the novel took place in 1988, when [the government] announced the demolition of Kowloon Walled City. I adjusted the historical period of the movie to a little earlier to around 1984, the year when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed [as this historical background enables me to present more of] the lives of Kowloon Walled City’s inhabitants.

This also impacted my character designs, especially the protagonist Chan Lok Kwan, who is a triad member in the novel. In the movie, he is a refugee—refugees were a huge social issue back in the days and people today still know about it. I designed for the movie to be told from the perspective of a refugee who looks at the city of Hong Kong.

What was your memory of Kowloon Walled City?
I had heard of it when I was a child, but I had never been to the city. I lived in a different neighbourhood. People said that it was dirty, and I wasn’t interested to head there to discover it for myself. When I grew up, I came across a lot of American and Japanese movies that include elements of Kowloon Walled City. It was then that I got more intrigued. I looked up information about it and found that it was a “cool” place.

What locations were used to make this film?
We used a few different locations to build the sets. The first was the outdoor area of Sai Kung’s film studio, where we built a street of Kowloon Walled City. Another was an abandoned school in Yuen Long. We modified the interior for the film and built a temple. We also created the ground and underground levels of Kowloon Walled City near the entrance to the actual historical location. Later we used CGI to put together the whole city.

How faithful to the original Kowloon Walled City were the film sets?
We couldn’t recreate the city in its original size because there were no official records of this. Kowloon Walled City was an ungoverned place so there were no authoritative bodies to regulate construction. All the units were illegal structures put together randomly, which formed a unique landscape.

We relied on a lot of research and interviewed many former residents to get a sense of the atmosphere. They recalled to us vividly what life was like within the walls. Based on that, we created a version of the city with our imagination. Because this isn’t a documentary but a feature film, I focused more on how to present this location aesthetically.

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What aspects of this historical area or Hong Kong’s character did you want to capture in the movie?
I mainly want to capture a side of Hong Kong in the past: Hong Kong was known to be a land of golden opportunities—and yet there was this slum. I also want to explore what the identity of Hongkongers was after being colonised for almost a century.

What message do you hope to convey through this film?
We tear down a lot of historic structures once they’re considered obsolete. This is an endless cycle. This seems to be a problem: we don’t know how to treasure what we have. Maintaining an old building, instead of designing new structures, is also an art.

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